Could use some advice on what to do in this game

So, I've reached a high level for the nth time in this game.

I really enjoy playing this game, but whenever I hit a high level, things just become EXTREMELY stagnant. Which is weird, because people say the endgame in PoE is "where it's at, baby" or something like that.

I'm now lvl 79. I am fully equipped in yellow gear. Nothing good ever drops. I farm mines and maps and heists, but nothing good ever drops. I grind and grind, but no upgrades ever show up. So I just end up quitting because I never get good enough gear to farm higher level maps.

Anyways, I guess my question is: What am I doing wrong? This CAN'T be the endgame in poe, right? Endless grinding in garbage gear until one day you finally get a single upgrade? Thanks for reading.

PoE in the current state is strange. If you are playing trade (which it seems you are), you don't farm for gear. You farm for currency with which to either craft (if you are knowledge) or buy (if you are not) your gear upgrades. Basically find some league mechanics that you enjoy, spec into it on your atlas tree, then farm that stuff to sell to other players for currency. Use that currency to buy the gear you want.

The above is very true. I will add the easiest way to get decent upgrades you actually make yourself is Rog from expedition. He wont make mirror tier items but if you learn how to effectively pick items and use his crafting you can make some pretty darn good items.

I farm for currency and divination cards, gather the wealth and then use the trade webpage to find reasonable updates en route.

Thats how I got here to 97.

My current strategy is mostly about heists and delirium / simulacrons.

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Robidybobidy wrote:

Anyways, I guess my question is: What am I doing wrong? This CAN'T be the endgame in poe, right? Endless grinding in garbage gear until one day you finally get a single upgrade? Thanks for reading.

If you're not trading then the game is definitely much harder. You have to know what gear upgrades are impactful, and how to work towards them effectively. I can't see your characters, but if you're playing a build that relies on good gear then it's going to be tough.

The fun of PoE's endgame for me is that there are so many things I can do. Do I want to run one of the many bosses, do I want to focus on Expedition, maybe I want to run some Logbooks, maybe I want to do the Delve challenge so I'll do that, oh maybe I can do Essences or Heist (just kidding) or Ritual or just blast maps with Exarch altars or... On it goes.

Upgrading my character's gear, improving QoL, killing things faster, moving faster, tanking big hits, all that is an entire other dimension that's symbiotic wth the other gameplay. Crafting some nice gear is a great feeling. All of these factors come together to create a huge amount of depth.


If I were you, I would find a bog-standard build with easy gearing (for example Pohx's Righteous Fire, or Zizaran's Toxic Rain + Totems), and use some of the currency you have gathered to get some gear to support you comfortably through maps. There is so much more to experience past level 80 in t14+ maps: you haven't met Eater or Exarch or the Maven or Shaper or Elder or Sirus or... You get it. I encourage you to have a good go at it :)

Well, thank you guys for taking the time to respond. I'm not sure it will help me, though. All of those solutions essentially require that I go back and grind stuff. As I mentioned before, I don't seem to be very lucky with rng, and my build is a tanky shield throw build, which apparently sucks without the legendary items needed for it. It's pretty good with clearing mobs, but bosses take a while...

I also don't have much of anything to trade. I have a couple of chaos orbs, and plenty of divination cards, but that's it. I have absolutely no clue what any of those bosses are. I tried doing the mining shaft earlier, and it just gave me more yellows to vendor. IDK. It just feels like the game doesn't want me to play it lol...

PoE is designed so all the best gear is crafted. GGG does not expect you to find upgrades much past level 60. If you want some easy, cheap crafting to learn the basics, one of the Expedition NPCs offer crafting.

If you are in trade league just buy your upgrades. This late in league it will be vastly cheaper than crafting yourself.

There is no RNG to the grind if you do it right. For example, one easy grind is to spec Harvest (including the nodes that make blue and purple seeds less common) and just run white maps if your guy is weak. You will get a lot of yellow seeds. These sell for divine orbs to other players (depending on the rate, you'll get a divine's worth every 5-10 maps).

As for how much currency you have right now, do you have a mega stash of chromes, fuses, alterations, etc.? Also essences, scarabs, etc. There are players who buy those in bulk on the trade site. If you aren't using them, you can just take some time and sell off most of what you have for a stack of either chaos or divines (depending on how much you have). You can then use that to start your upgrades.

Realize that a big part of playing PoE successfully is understanding WHAT is actually valuable. There is no such thing as a player who grinds forever and NEVER drops anything valuable. The much more likely scenario is that that player thinks only chaos orbs and divine orbs are valuable to drop. Nobody's RNG is that good that they drop insane quantities of both of those.

Finally, if the items you want to buy cost chaos and not divines let's say and for whatever reason you think you are cursed, there is a guaranteed way to get the chaos you need:

There is a vendor recipe (that means you sell items to a vendor in one of the towns and they will return something) where if you sell an unidentified set of rare items, all of which are at least level 60 but no more than level 74, one for each slot on your character (hat, chest, amulet, 2 rings, belt, shoes, gloves, and either a 2H weapon, 2 1H weapons, 1H weapon and shield, or a bow), you will receive 2 chaos orbs back (if any of them are identified, you'll only get 1 chaos orb). So if your character is REALLY weak and you REALLY have nothing, just go farm rares like this, don't identify them, and you will get 2 chaos per set. It shouldn't take you long to get enough chaos for some cheap uniques if that's what you badly need. I do not recommend doing this once you have enough stuff to get going (I personally don't ever do this at all, even in SSF) because it's a really inefficient way to grind but it's guaranteed. The jewelry pieces are the hardest to find but if you do low level heists, they drop there in spades.

You mention tons of yellow drops to vendor, which suggests that you might not be using a loot filter, which is kind of essential at map stage. Filterblade.xyz is the most commonly used one.
Other than that I would suggest setting some goals for your build (reaching red maps, defeating pinnacle bosses, finishing league challenges) and then looking for ways to accomplish these (Path of Building tool helps tremendously with this) -> item upgrades, skill tree adjustments, cluster jewels, defensive layers, etc!

I'm not super good at the game myself, but as an example yesterday I traded for this belt on my Armageddon Brand Recaller and added a Defiance Banner which increased my defenses exponentially and that allowed me to push further in maps and defeat my first Elder guardian :)
I plan to finish a few more challenges before the league ends and for that I will need to do some more adjustments in my Atlas passive tree and my gem setup.

Regarding Trading - it took me a few leagues of playtime to learn what kinds of things are valuable and easily tradable (scarabs and fossils are always in demand for example, Blighted Maps often sell well especially early in a league, etc.).
To get an idea of prices for various kind of items you might want to take a look at https://poe.ninja or use another tool such as Awakened PoE Trade to look up item value on the go (yeah, PoE is kind of heavy on third party sites and apps :P )